


Known

by vwright



Category: Ylvis
Genre: M/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-22
Updated: 2014-06-22
Packaged: 2018-02-04 23:03:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1796542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vwright/pseuds/vwright
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They were caught.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Known

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: The events, characters, and entities depicted in this work are fictional. Any resemblance or similarity to any actual events, entities, or persons, whether living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
> 
> Big thanks to mommytiger for the inspiration!

Bård sat on the concrete bench, ignoring the view below. There was nothing down there he wanted to see right now. Lately it seemed people would do anything to get a glimpse of him, given recent events. Their eyes were hungry to devour the sight of him and condemn him, just as he always knew would be the case. Yet despite the knowledge, despite all earthly warning, he was surprised at how bad it really felt to be hated.

Bård turned his head at a rustle from the bush beside him, only a moment of panic before Vegard's dark curls emerged through the brush. Bård exhaled, forcing a relieved sigh. Except there couldn't be real relief, not now when he only ever held his breath, waiting to wake up from his nightmare of a life. He didn't sleep anymore anyway.

"Hi," Vegard breathed, voice quiet even in the surrounding silence. He looked at his little brother, presumably taking in his current condition. It was the first time they'd seen each other since it happened. Since before it happened, even. Bård returned his gaze for only half the time; he found that through everything there was no one he wanted to see more and see less than his brother. 

Bård nodded vaguely, and Vegard took light steps over to the bench. The dirt and leaves under his feet barely crunched, and Bård wondered how. Anywhere he stepped, he felt metric tons of force crushing into the earth, burdened by the plummeting weight inside of him. Vegard seemed almost weightless--empty. 

He took a seat beside him, ample space between them, and looked out over the city. Dusk was approaching beneath the thick cloud cover, dimming the shade of gray with each passing minute. Bård looked at his knees, hands clenched into fists inside his jacket pockets.

"How did you get here?" Bård asked. His voice was scratchy from disuse. Vegard turned sharply at the sound, and Bård met his eyes. He could see his chest rising and falling in careful little heaves, puffs of breath emanating from his mouth in the chill air.

"I walked." Bård broke eye contact again, nodding into his lap. He began to calculate how many miles the distance was from Vegard's house to their spot. "You?" Vegard asked, eyes looking as hungrily as the rest of them. Bård peered out over the cliff, wondering if anyone could see them from down there.

"I paid a cabbie 2,000 kr to take me here and not tell anyone."

"Do you think he told anyway?"

"I don't know." Bård looked around them, ears listening for the familiar click of a shutter. Nothing.

"We shouldn't stay long anyway," Vegard said. Bård offered no response, vaguely annoyed that his brother felt the need to state obvious things. They sat in pained silence for another minute, Vegard pointedly looking at him, Bård pointedly not. "Are you okay?" Vegard asked. His voice communicated the soft protectiveness he'd always had for his younger brother. He remembered other times when he used that voice; memories of warmth and skin and breath flittered behind his eyes, and Bård felt suddenly nauseous.

"No." Bård refused his kindness; Vegard clenched his jaw, withholding a frown. "You?" Bård asked, biting back some of his bitterness. Vegard sighed and broke his gaze.

"Helene's gone, took the kids."

"Where?"

"I dont know. She said if I wanted to see them again I shouldn't come looking for them." Bård swallowed hard; he was able to start pinpointing the losses that left his brother so hollow. His tired, sunken eyes looked lost, and Bård shuddered knowing he was the cause of it. "Where are you staying?"

"A hotel in town." Bård's voice was flat, and he could feel the offer waiting on his brother's lips.

"You can stay with me, if you want," Vegard said.

"I can't." Bård kept his eyes away, slightly angered that he even suggested it. Their new life had rules, and if they wanted to get out of it, they had to play by them.

"So," Vegard ventured. "Maria was--"

"Furious, yeah." Bård looked over and Vegard nodded. His adam's apple bobbed in his throat as he swallowed thickly, and Bård was momentarily distracted. "But she knew." Bård looked up to his eyes again. "I could see it. There was no shock, it was just..." He motioned for blankness in front of his face. Vegard leaned back against the bench and waited for his brother to continue. "She knew for a long time, I think, she just has to deal with it now."

Vegard rubbed his hands over his face and sighed. In truth, Bård wished his wife had been more angry. He would rather she had smashed plates, thrown things, chased him out the house with a bat. Anything like that would have been better than the resigned fury she adopted instead. For Bård, her reaction didn't feel like a storm passing through, but instead an unmovable wall he could never climb over. He didn't expect forgiveness or reconciliation, but he had hoped for leniency. He was still a father after all.  

"Have you talked to anybody?" Vegard asked. 

"Jorgen called me after it happened, told me to stay put and shut up." Bård leaned back and crossed his arms, letting his eyes wander over the expanse of cityscape.

"Yeah, me too."

The concept of being monitored, watched, was still new for Bård. Despite their newfound global fame, he still expected a level of disinterest from his homeland. Now, being known around the world meant the world knowing about the video. Making international news focused eyes from every direction on them. From now on they'd always be looking--for signs, more proof. There was no escape, anywhere.

"You could have called me, texted me--" Vegard burst out.

"No, I couldn't," Bård retorted. He looked to his brother with irritation in his eyes. He truly did not understand how his older, sensible brother could say such senseless things at a time like this.

"You can talk to me now," he sneered. There it was, what Vegard was really getting at. 

"What do you want me to say, Vegard? Everything I'm feeling you already know." 

"That's not true." Vegard turned his body on the bench to face him, and Bård followed suit.

"Really? You need me to tell you how fucking awful I feel? Is that what you want?" Bård found himself practically yelling and his brother shrinking away. 

"No, that's not..." Vegard gave up on his words and slumped, letting breath hiss out of his lungs. "Are you mad at me now?" he asked, peering over at his brother with beaten eyes. Bård felt the faintest traces of pity for his actions.

"I'm not mad, I'm just upset." His voice had lowered again, conscious of the fact that perhaps there could be someone listening. He thought over his brother's veiled accusation, and translated the volume of his anger to a low growl. "And it's not like you've ever been forthcoming with your feelings either. Every time I tried to get you to--"

"Oh god, forget I said anything. Let's not turn on each other right now, please. I don't need you hating me too."

There they were again, at the core of what was happening. There was confusion, anger, and hurt as well, but mostly hatred. It was the people who didn't even know them, who didn't even understand what they were like, that bothered Bård the most. On the surface, yes, the whole thing was sort of "jaw-dropping" (as one tabloid put it), but for anyone who had spent more than an hour with them, the truth would be more along the lines of simply unsettling rather than surprising. For something as unnatural as incest, nothing had ever come to Bård as easily. He didn't like to call it that though; it sounded wrong, dirty. Even then, standing dead center in the ashes of his former life, when he looked back on the footage of them in that parking lot, all he could focus on was how happy they looked.

Bård remembered the night among hundreds of similar nights, where he and Vegard would say good night outside the office--privately, under the glow of fluorescent lamplight. The video was silent, but he remembered everything they had said. They were making a joke about his car, Bård being on the receiving end of the teasing for once. It would look normal to most, except for their proximity that grew and grew as they laughed and smiled more. The point past doubt was when Bård grabbed his brother's face, nails grazing his scalp, and Vegard responded with hands on Bård's hips. Vegard started to laugh in Bård's face, when he leaned down and silenced him with a lingering kiss. Bård must have watched the moment a hundred times in the past week. _So that's what we look like_ , he thought to himself. He made the creeping realization that despite how many years they'd spent in front of a camera, he'd never actually _seen_ them together. He became almost obsessed with the image, seeing it from a real, unbiased view. It was the only opportunity he'd ever have, anyway. It was the first and last time Bård and his brother would be seen together in any permanent form. Bård tried to feel good about it, but instead an extra ounce of remorse piled on.

In a strange case of coincidence, Vegard had said to him only two days before the incident that they were being pretty risky, always saying their proper goodbyes where someone could see them. Bård just laughed it off and said that they'd better put on a good show, then.     

"I should have listened to you. It's my fault," Bård said, timid guilt pouring into his voice.

"No it isn't," Vegard answered. It was a change of pace, someone finally refusing to shame him for what he'd done, but Bård found he didn't want it.

"Whatever," he said, fingers drumming on his leg.

"This isn't your fault," his brother reiterated. He was so sincere, and it made Bård's blood froth.

"Then whose fault is it? It's not yours, and it's not mine; is it the universe's fault? Whatever fucked up genes that make us want this?"

His outburst was met with silence, and one look at his brother said that he had struck him, painfully.

"You're ashamed of us." Vegard's voice was a near whisper, eyes downcast. The innocence in his look only bothered Bård more.

"Our lives are fucking over, Vegard, how can you not see that?"

"Oh I see it, Bård." His brother's voice rose to the volume of his own. "My house is fucking empty. No one is coming back. I know full well that everything is gone."

"Jesus, then why are you here? Why are you being nice to me? I ruined everything--"

"You're what I have left," Vegard cut in. He looked exasperated, and tired, his vehement tone from before crumpling with each second. "It sounds cold that way, but it's true. This is all that I have now. You are, I mean. I'm not..."

"You're not what?" Bård asked, worried what the answer might be.

"I don't even know what I was going to say." 

Sitting beside each other they could have been in separate countries. They weren't on the same page that day, their approaches and attitude toward their doom on opposite ends of the spectrum. They had been knocked out of alignment after the earth shaking revelation, and tried in vain to reconnect. Bård thought maybe he should try again, but silence and time seemed a more fitting solution to the problem. Of course, Vegard thought the opposite. 

"It was weird," Vegard started. "She kept saying 'the ugly thing you've done,' 'that horrible thing you did.' Like it was just one thing, that had a start or an end, or..." He trailed off. Bård knew what he meant, knew he should tell him so. He complied only to avoid further conflict.

"Yeah."

Bård recalled the sharp embarrassment when he last saw his wife, her asking him if Bård had cheated on her with his brother or if it was the other way around. He hesitated, not really knowing the answer.

"You still love me?" Vegard asked. Bård lost his train of thought and had to replay what his brother had just said in his brain. 

"What?"

"I mean right now, after all the shit, after every bad thing that could happen happened." Vegard held his gaze fast, eyes a little too desperate for Bård's comfort. "Do you still love me?"

Bård paused, a habit he knew both of his partners hated. Important questions required careful answers; he needed to placate his brother without sacrificing his own stubborn irritation.

"It's like you said. There's not a start or an end. Believe me, if I could stop, we wouldn't be here right now, that's for fucking sure."

Vegard frowned and looked away. Bård knew he offended him, but it was all he could give right now. He said he still loved him. Which he did, just, now it was different. Now, it was a million times harder to love him and not feel guilty about it. He worried how numb his brother had to be to not feel the guilt equally, if not worse.

The next thing he realized, Vegard was pressed up beside him. A hand was placed high on Bård's thigh and the other slid up his neck to grab his head. He turned his brother to face him by force, and Bård resisted with the little leverage he had. He looked at his brother's flushed cheeks and hooded eyes, and gave him nothing back but confusion.

"What the hell are you doing?" Bård asked, trying to pull his mouth farther from his brother's. Vegard let the pressure off, but held his hand in place. Bård didn't move any further, not having the will to part from the first closeness he'd had in over a week. In the face of everything, that of his brother's still held an unshakeable power over him. 

"Do you want to kiss me?" Vegard asked, eyes darting from Bård's lips to his eyes and back. 

"Yes." He couldn't lie. Not while looking him in the eyes. His brother's pupils widened marginally, and he leaned in again, making Bård panic and pull away.

"Bård, please--" Vegard chased his lips but Bård brought an arm between them, wrenching himself back.

"I can't, I can't."

Vegard froze where he was, watching Bård settle back before he scooted away himself. He threw an arm over the cold concrete of the bench and leaned back to stare defiantly at his brother. 

"You're leaving me." Vegard scoffed. "After all this? You're just going to leave?"

"I don't know, Vegard. I don't know what I'm supposed to do." Bård sunk his head into his hands, digging his fingers through his hair.

"What was the point of it then? We're in hell anyway, we might as well just stay here." Vegard was staring him down. Bård had his reasons for distancing himself, he didn't know why his brother couldn't understand that. There were huge, monumental reasons why Bård should run from his brother and never look back. It was more for Vegard's sake than his own.

"You have a baby coming, you need to be there. You need," Bård's breath shuddered in his chest, emotion bobbing up into his throat without permission. "...to be away from me. Maybe you have a chance."

Vegard said nothing for a while. Bård let him stew, hoping the pulsing anger of the man next to him would subside.

"You know I always thought that if this happened you would fight for us," Vegard said, a bitter laugh following it. Bård sighed and rolled his eyes. 

"You can't fight the whole world," Bård said, but Vegard didn't seem to even hear him. 

"And I would tell you, 'No Bård, I won't let you do this. I won't let you ruin your life, I'll be a martyr for us.' All that _if you love something set it free_  bullshit." Vegard looked him dead in the eyes, a fevered will burning behind them. "I don't want to set you free. I don't want to do the right thing." The eyes searched Bård's for a reaction, but came up short. "Do you?"

Vegard was just saying this, Bård knew. He might have felt that way in his brother's presence, high on the adrenaline of not feeling alone after 9 days of hatred, but if he wasn't there when his baby was born, he'd never forgive him. His brother might be convinced of his immorality now, but Bård sensed it couldn't last. He was too good. 

"Yes, I do," Bård said, holding his brother's gaze. Vegard slid across the bench, coming up close beside him again.

"So none of it was worth it to you then?"

Bård's breath quickened, the will to run weakening with proximity. 

"No."

Vegard grabbed his brother's chin, thumb pressed just below his bottom lip. 

"Look me in the eyes and tell me you regret it." 

Their mouths were so close now, and Bård knew what would happen if he didn't speak up. He tried to conjure the words, spit them out and repel his brother's request. He couldn't. Vegard saw his silence for the failure it was, and pressed needy lips against his. They inhaled in time, too alike for Bård's taste--too telling that they were kin. Every time a reminder of their ruin peaked in his brain, a caress of his brother's lip or a swipe of his tongue would push it down, shushing it into a vacant silence. Bård kissed back. There was no way around it, no way to teach himself how to stop once he'd started. But he ought to try; he had to try for someone's sake. Carnal pleasure couldn't wipe out enclosing darkness forever. 

Bård let his lips go slack and his brother got the hint, slowing his movements too until he parted from him. He stayed close to his brother, thigh pressed next to his, jiggling up and down in a quick rhythm. The heat from the kiss was slowly leaving Bård's body and he appreciated the warmth beside him, despite how cold he was feeling inside. 

"She said I was mentally ill," Bård said. "Do you think that's what it is?"

"I don't know. Maybe." Vegard rubbed his hands on his legs, the darkness bringing on chill as the hour wore on. 

"At least then we wouldn't be to blame for it."

Vegard sighed. He tried looking at Bård, but he refused him. Again. 

"When are you going to stop feeling like that, you think? That you're guilty for this?" Vegard's lack of patience imbued every word, Bård knowing that all his brother wanted was for him to agree with him for once. He knew the feeling.

"When are you going to start?" Bård granted him a glance, and a defiant glint shined in his eyes. 

"Are you going to stick around to find out?"

Bård didn't have an answer. He weighed how much it would really work to stay away from his brother at this point. Everyone already knew; it was a mark on his record that could never be expunged. In a way he could see Vegard's side of things: his world had already ended, he ought to live out the apocalypse with the only man he'd die for. Him and his brother bought a one way ticket to damnation, so they might as well enjoy the ride. But then he thought of his children, and realized how fucking crazy it was to think that way. Just because you lost your fingers doesn't mean you should cut off your whole arm. Bård figured the best decision would be to salvage what he could of his family and his sound mind. Then again, he swore away his sanity from the moment he dared to touch his brother's lips with his own. Maybe even before, or maybe his wife was right when she said he was born sick. 

By then Vegard had stopped expecting an answer from his little brother. Bård could feel him easing up and backing off in the most calculated manner. They were both searching for salvation techniques, in their own ways. Bård for his lost children, and Vegard for the tenuous grip he held on his brother's heart. They should have known better that actions meant consequences meant irreversible change. There is no absolution for those who jump into the fire willingly. 

"If one of us were a girl, we'd be in jail right now," Bård mused aloud.

"Lucky us," Vegard replied. Bård snickered, and Vegard turned his head with a slight smile. Lucky was hardly a word they could use now, but Bård remembered when he used to feel that way. Surrounded by every earthly thing he could ever want, he counted himself the luckiest man alive. He couldn't know it wasn't luck but ignorance that cocooned his life's bliss. He knew now. Everyone did. 


End file.
